Miami, It's Murder (7 page)

I nodded, wondering if she was alone when she got home to her new house in Broward County.

I knew how I felt. I wanted to go home and soak in a hot bath. After the last three days, I didn't care if I ever fell in love again. Memories of Kendall McDonald and his warm body next to mine were fading fast. Was he the last of an endangered species? Doesn't anybody do normal sex anymore?

It was nearly midnight Friday when I finished the Downtown Rapist story. I drove home through the mother of all thunderstorms. Whirling wind and rain, whipped almost horizontally, beat against my windshield. Lightning spiraled across the sky, cosmic-sized sparks, setting off high-voltage pyrotechnic fireworks followed by violent cracks of thunder. Sporadic flashes illuminated palm trees bent and twisted by the storm's ferocity and deserted streets flooded by the deluge. The good news was that my late night at the office saved the ophthalmologist and me from each other and our mothers' good intentions.

To make amends, I made an appearance at the fashion show Saturday. My mother seemed pleased, and it made me giddy to mingle even briefly in a world of music, pink linen tablecloths, and lavish centerpieces surrounded by happy, well-dressed people whose chief concerns revolved around the length of fall hemlines. My mother looked ultra chic in soft flowered silk, exquisitely cut. She beamed, whispering eagerly in my ear as we ogled the fall line of evening wear, gorgeous glittery satins and shimmery silks. Unfortunately, my nights out in Miami are usually spent at shootings, fires, or other disasters. Sequins are out. Rubber boots and hard hats are in. I slipped away from the luncheon to make my routine checks at Miami police headquarters, which lacked the same ambience.

The young cop on duty did a double-take and raised an approving eyebrow. My luncheon garb, a bright yellow blazer over a black silk shell and matching slacks, was the best dressed he'd ever seen me. A persistent signal from my beeper, clipped to my purse, interrupted my check of the overnight log and reports. The city desk was calling. Six inches had to be trimmed from my weekender on the Downtown Rapist in time for the street edition. I went back to the office, eager to do the cutting myself rather than have an editor hack at my story.

I took a look when the first copies of the early edition came up to the newsroom. The story ran out front, though the composite did not appear until the jump, on page 12 A. As I scanned the copy, my heart skidded downhill. The last graf, with the police hot-line number for readers to call with information about the rapist, was missing. Obviously it had not been dropped due to a lack of space, because there was a short, a tiny one-paragraph story, in its place.

HAVANA
—Tunnels dug beneath Havana to provide shelter in the event of an enemy attack are also being used to grow edible mushrooms, the Communist Youth Weekly Juventud Rebelde reported Saturday.

Mushrooms?

I charged the city desk like a maddened animal.

“I removed it,” Gretchen acknowledged placidly. She pursed her lips, looking righteous. “We don't work for the police. Why should we publish their number? They just want to use us.”

No wonder people hate the press. Nobody wins an argument with Gretchen unless they outrank her on the corporate chart, so I didn't argue.

“By the way,” she called, as I stalked away. “It is important to remember that when you are out in public you represent this newspaper.”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm glad to see you taking more pains with your appearance.” She eyed my outfit and nodded smugly. “Very nice.”

Jesus! I thought.

I immediately went over her head, knowing she'd hate me for it and I'd pay later. Fred Douglas happened to be in his office, unusual for a Saturday.

“She's got a point,” he said without conviction, evading my eyes. Loyal to the core, he backs up his people. But he is also fair and reasonable.

“Not in this instance,” I said coolly. “Of course we're not working for them. But catching this rapist is a community effort, and part of the story is that the police have installed a special hot line.” I avoided mentioning that it had been set up solely in anticipation of the story.

Fred busily rearranged the papers on his desk. He looked noncommittal.

“The story says help is needed to identify the rapist, then describes him,” I went on. “Without the number, how on earth will a reader with a tip find the right cop to give it to? There are twenty-seven police departments and six thousand cops in Dade County. You know what will happen. All the readers who want to help will call us instead of them.” I turned to gaze meaningfully at Gloria, the city-desk clerk, talking innocently on the telephone, two lines blinking on hold. “We'll need a few other people to help Gloria answer phones. Hundreds of calls will come in for days. A lot of them will write, we may need to add somebody in the mail room—”

“Okay, okay, Britt,” he said, trying to sound impatient as he raised both hands in surrender. “I get the point. No need for overkill.” I returned to my desk and acted busy, pretending not to notice as he went to the city desk and told them the number should go back into the story for the final.

I couldn't wait to get to the office Sunday. The cops had more than eighty calls by 11
A
.
M
. We would get the spillover, people who don't talk to the police, who prefer a reporter, or who found the hot line busy. I already had a stack of messages, and my phone was ringing when I arrived. I crossed my fingers and snatched it up.

The caller sounded middle-aged and dead serious. She was sure she had seen the rapist. I opened a fresh notebook, pencil poised.

“A month ago,” she said breathlessly, her voice dropping. “I don't want you to use my name, of course.”

“Where was this, what happened?” I asked, taking notes.

“On I-Ninety-Five. I was driving north, to the Sawgrass Mills Mall. His car pulled up in the lane next to me. The way he looked at me, I'll never forget it. When I read the story this morning I knew it had to be the same man.”

“What else did he do?”

“Uh, nothing. I took the exit and he kept going.”

“All right. What kind of car was he driving?”

“It wasn't new, it wasn't old. It could have been Japanese or German, but I'm not sure.”

“Did you get a tag number?”

“No.” She sounded slightly irritated at my foolish question. “I was busy driving. I called you instead of that police number. I didn't want them coming out to my house for my neighbors to see or anything, but I'm sure it was him. I'll never forget the look on his face.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“I thought it was the right thing to do,” she said.

At least she wasn't tying up the hot line and making the police hate me, I thought. I shuffled hopefully through the messages, skipping optimistically to one that read
Woman says she knows how to catch the Downtown Rapist
.

The elderly voice who answered quavered slightly but sounded sincere. “I'm so glad you returned my call,” she said eagerly. “There was a case just like this one a few years ago, on
Columbo
, or maybe it was
Kojak
. They solved it and caught the man, I just don't remember exactly how. But if you contact the network and get them to show you a copy of that episode, the police could see how they did it.”

“
Columbo
, or maybe
Kojak
,” I repeated, eyes closed.

“Or was it
Perry Mason?
” she said slowly. “Wait, no, I think it was probably
Kojak
, on CBS, or maybe it was NBC. I remember it distinctly. Did you get that?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

“Glad to help.”

The next woman divulged the name of the man she said was the rapist and the address where police could pick him up at that very moment if they hurried. He was her former son-in-law, who incidentally had not made his court-ordered child support payments since the fall of 1991, though he had money enough to buy a new red TransAm and live in a fancy apartment. He was of Polish extraction, born in Detroit, and looked nothing like the composite.

I didn't know whether to put down my pencil or jam the point into my jugular. I hoped the readers calling the cops had more substantial clues.

To my relief, a story tore me from the telephone. The police had found something in the water off the Venetian Causeway.

Police divers often plumb the waters around bridges for weapons deep-sixed by fleeing felons. They find lots of tin cans, junk, and old tools. This was something bigger, spotted with the naked eye by the captain of a passing tour boat: a car submerged in forty feet of water just off the causeway.

A broad-shouldered blond man in an immaculate white uniform stood apart from the tight circle of cops, firemen, and divers. He was impossible not to notice.

“You Coast Guard?” I asked, picking my way over coral rock and brushy outgrowths.

He shook his head, flashing a killer smile. “I'm Curt Norske, captain of the
Sea Dancer
.”

“I remember your dad,” I said, with a surge of memory. His father, a Miami pioneer, was city manager years ago. Well respected and forward-thinking, he had retired before I joined the paper and died several years later. The
Sea Dancer
, berthed at Bayside, cruised Biscayne Bay and the residential islands on sightseeing tours several times a day. I introduced myself.

“So you're the one who writes those stories. I read all your stuff. You're good. Had no idea you were so young and photogenic. Why aren't you on TV?”

“Because I write for the newspaper.” Was he putting me on? He sounded serious and had a gorgeous smile. Of course, this man was trained to charm tourists.

“Captain Norske—”

“Call me Curt.” His hazel eyes, flecked with gold, remained focused on me, despite the sounds of passing traffic and the shouts of the cops, the divers, and the wrecker driver, who was backing his truck up to the water's edge.

The connection and the energy it generated between us stirred something so basic that I automatically reminded myself to stay professional. “Curt, did
you
spot the car, or was it a passenger?”

“It was me,” he said. “I take her through the drawbridge here at least twice a day. Never noticed a thing. Today, the light was just right, the water super clear—and the wreck may have moved, shifted on the bottom, probably during that bad thunderstorm Friday night.”

I remembered it. Bitsy and Billy Boots had been huddled together under the bed when I burst in, drenched and windblown after the short dash from the car.

“Had a Japanese tour group aboard, so I dropped a buoy to mark the spot, took the tourists back to the dock, reported it, and drove back over here to show the cops the right place.”

A diver in a wet suit emerged, saying that the car was overturned, its roof crushed. There didn't seem to be anyone inside.

This car, savaged by saltwater corrosion, had obviously been there for a long time. Scores of stolen and abandoned automobiles are reclaimed from the depths of greater Miami's hundreds of miles of waterways every year. Divers had attached a line to this one and were ready to bring it out.

“Better move back a little,” Curt warned. “You don't want to be too close in case that cable snaps.” He touched my back, guiding me to a safer vantage point, an odd sensation. The most attention I usually get at a scene is cops and firemen cursing and yelling at me to move back.

Yanked by the wrecker from the floor of Biscayne Bay, the rusted hulk emerged, oozing mud and water. It came to rest on dry land for the first time since being abandoned by some thief or insurance-hungry owner. “Looks like a Chevy Malibu!” a policeman yelled.

The tag was bent, oxidized, and coated with silt. The diver bent to study the plate, rubbing off some gunk with his hand. An older, heavyset cop in uniform yanked open the driver's door to look for identification. “It's an 'eighty-seven Florida tag,” the diver said.

“Christ!” The cop jumped back from the car as though startled by something terrible. He had been. What looked like a piece of cloth was still tangled in the fastened seat belt. The driver. He had obviously been there for years.

The older cop stepped our way. He had his hand on his chest. “Jesus,” he said, “I didn't expect that. Looks like somebody's been missing a long time.”

Curt and I watched solemnly. Covered with barnacles and sea growth, the still-dripping hulk sat on the bank of the bay surrounded by uniforms and detectives. The missing man's wallet was still inside what remained of his trousers. “We're gonna have to let it dry out before we try to find any ID in it,” the cop said. No sign of foul play. A simple accident. The car had been buffeted about on the bottom by storms and strong tides. They were lucky to have found it.

A family is spending this Sunday afternoon somewhere, I thought, unaware that a missing loved one is about to come home.

I asked the cop handling the report where he'd be and arranged to call him later.

“You're not leaving?” Curt said.

I nodded. “Back to the office.”

“I was hoping you'd come over to Bayside for the afternoon tour on the
Dancer
. No charge. You ever take one of our cruises?”

I smiled. “No, that's something the tourists do. Just like native New Yorkers never visit the Statue of Liberty. Only newcomers take the tours, the rest of us are too busy making a living.”

He stared down at me. “Did you say you're a native, Britt?”

“Born here.” I nodded. “So was my mom.”

“Mine too. Wonder why it took so long for us to meet? It's about time. Realize how rare we are? Nobody was born in Miami, at least almost nobody. Come aboard the
Dancer
this afternoon. I'll show you our home town like you've never seen it.”

I smiled. “I can't today, but maybe another time—”

“You'll love it; it's relaxing away from the murder and mayhem. You can have a drink. We have a bar aboard.”

The man was persuasive. I considered his motives.

“I won't write a story about it,” I warned. “No free publicity. Unless, of course, the boat sinks and dumps a load of screaming tourists in the bay, or the passengers riot and start throwing each other over the side, or they all evacuate except the captain, who goes down with the—”